The present invention relates to the field of power consumption at a network connection. More specifically, the present invention relates to power conservation at a network connection.
Power consumption is an important aspect of computer systems, particularly in mobile computer systems such as laptops, where laptops consume power from a limited source, typically a battery. Included in a laptop is a network adapter. The network adapter consumes power even when there is no cable connected to the network adapter. However, because the laptop is mobile, the laptop may be disconnected from the network by removing the network cable from the network adapter and moved to a different location and reconnected onto the network by reconnecting the network cable into the network adapter. In order to quickly re-establish the network connection, even though the laptop does not have a network cable connected to the network adapter, during the move from one location to another, the network adapter consumes power. The alternative would be to power down the network adapter and fully reset the network adapter hardware and reload the network adapter driver to re-establish the network connection at the different location, which consumes large amounts of power for the reset and reload processes draining battery power.
Network adapters are typically transceivers with the network adapters having a transmitter and a receiver component. Typically in a prior art network adapter, power consumption of the network adapter is not controlled depending upon whether or not a network connection exists (i.e., whether or not a network cable is connected to the network adapter receiving and transmitting network signals). In the prior art network adapter, the receiver component is typically consuming power by actively xe2x80x9clisteningxe2x80x9d for incoming signals off the network cable. Additionally, the transmitter component of the network adapter is also consuming power by actively attempting to transmit a network adapter link information and trying to establish a connection even though there may not be a network cable connected to the network adapter. This allows for quick re-establishing of the network connection from a different location once the network cable is re-attached to the network adapter.
In some prior art network adapters, power consumption by the network adapters may be turned to a low power consumption state when there is no network connection. However, typically in the prior art network adapter with the low power consumption state, once the network connection is re-established, the network adapter completely resets itself and requires a network adapter driver to be reloaded in order to re-establish the connection. This means that in order to re-establish the network connection from a different location, a large amount of power is consumed by the network adapter.